Well yeah. I don't think anyone views any qi or neigong practices as heavy physical training. We know conditioning is useful and necessary. These practices just arent about breathing and flexibility and fitness. As I've been taught to understand it that is the basic practice of neigong.

I'm asking about the end product. Accumulated experience of internal focus on mechanics, marrying breath with movement. unifying coordinated strength with intention. Meditation and heightened awareness of internal body works. It's not something that's really scientifically verifiable per se in my opinion, its abstract, and progress in it is subjective for the most part I think in regard to fighting applicability. I also reckon there may well be an element of self-deception involved as well. But is that necessarily a bad thing? I think part of "IMA" practice is training your mind to actively direct your body, in a sort of "if i think i can, i can" type manner.

I thought i'd ask vets here, simply because some of them have been doing IMA for years, and people on this board seem to be relatively pragmatic.

Well yeah. I don't think anyone views any qi or neigong practices as heavy physical training.

Again, it depends on the exact exercises you mean. Some qigong is extremely physically taxing so that beginners will gas out doing them in under a minute, while people who continue the training can endure it for longer and longer periods of time. But this is really no different from other forms of more modern endurance training, like running to prepare for marathon. Doing that requires intense focus, coordination, and conditioning. The legs might move a lot in the process, but there is a lot of "internal" going on in the average marathon runner.

Originally Posted by Anjin

I think part of "IMA" practice is training your mind to actively direct your body, in a sort of "if i think i can, i can" type manner.

Your mind and body are not two things but really one "thing", and your mind is always directing your body (whether you realize it or not). It's when you dwell on separating them or thinking one follows the other that delusion comes in.

You think "I can hit, I can't hit" and become deluded with duality. A flying bird or a swimming fish never makes such a distinction, and so is a master of their internal energy without spending a second of their life training neigong.

@W. Rabbit Ironically I ended up finding out that I was wrong about qigong being hard work last night. Granted, we had been doing wrestling rounds and such right before it but still my legs and back were really tired after the xingyi qigong. Some of it was in deep stances, but not all of it. That was the first time i've ever done any actual Qigong as well. When it comes to San Ti training though, I recall him saying that this style of santi is more hard, yang, cultivating demanding practice

and this version you're meant to do when you're physically tired and its more meditative or nutritive, focusing on six harmonies/direction force imagery and 'internal' stuff (sorry, the picture is small)

The main difference is in the hands, feet, and overall exertion in the two from a physical perspective, although Sun's legs look the same in both.

@It Is Fake you're definitely right about that being a prerequisite for athletes. I always looked at a guy like Joe Louis as an example of that. His power and expression and occasionally fighting strategy seems very 'internal'. About meditation being about intense focus.... I think that depends on the goals/discipline, no? The meditation i learned when growing up (i was raised hindu) seems very different than the meditative aspects of Xingyi/Qigong/Neigong stuff im learning.